Can you best reach your own potential by helping others reach theirs?

Undergrads who wrote letters of encouragement to “at-risk” middleschoolers advising them to persevere and that intelligence “is not a finite endowment but rather an expandabale capacity” became, themselves, happier and better in school for months afterward.

Truth is, there were no middleschoolers. Just writing the letters achieved these results.

Or consider another study, this one with American students at Stanford asked to serve as pen pals with “at-risk” middleschoolers. The college students were instructed to offer encouragements to the younger kids by explaining in their letters that they, too, had struggled at times in school but eventually persevered and found academic success. They were told to emphasize the idea that natural ability is overrated — that intelligence “is not a finite endowment but rather an expandabale capacity.”

Did these letters help the middle school students bounce back from adversity? It’s impossible to say — the letters were never delivered. But the mere experience of writing them had a lasting impact on the college students themselves. Months later, the letter writers were still reporting greater enjoyment of school than were other Stanford undergrads. Their grade point averages were higher, too, by a full third of a point on a four-point scale.

What’s interesting to me is that this study ties together many things we’ve explored on the blog prior, all of which may be contributing the incredible results of this study: